Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Paul Boese

Nature thrives on patience; man on impatience.

Character | Impatience | Man | Nature | Patience | Wisdom |

William J. H. Boetcker, fully William John Henry Boetcker

A man without religion or spiritual vision is like a captain who finds himself in the midst of an uncharted sea, without compass, rudder and steering wheel. He never knows where he is, which way he is going and where he is going to land.

Character | Land | Man | Religion | Vision |

William Bolitho, pen name for Charles William Ryall

You need more tact in the dangerous art of giving than in any other social action.

Action | Art | Character | Giving | Need | Tact | Art |

François Bourgoing

The aim and end of prayer is to revere, to recognize and to adore the sovereign majesty of God, through what he is in Himself rather than what he is in regard to us, and rather to love his goodness by the love of that goodness itself than for what it sends us.

Character | God | Love | Prayer | Regard |

Barbara Brennan

The meaning of life is experienced when we are in touch with our unique essence, sometimes called the divine spark within... It is both individual and universal. When we are fully aware of this unique inner radiance, we feel what it is to be utterly alive. We experience unconditional love. We sense complete safety because that spark also connects us to the universal divinity within all things.

Character | Divinity | Experience | Individual | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Sense | Unique |

Phillips Brooks

No man or woman of the humblest sort can really be strong, gentle, pure and good, without the world being the better for it, without somebody being helped an comforted by the very existence of that goodness.

Better | Character | Existence | Good | Man | Woman | World |

Jean de La Bruyère

Politeness does not always evince goodness, equity, complaisance, or gratitude, but it gives at least the appearance of these qualities, and makes man appear outwardly as he should be within.

Appearance | Character | Equity | Gratitude | Man | Qualities |

Buddha, Gautama Buddha, or The Buddha, also Gotama Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha and Buddha Śākyamuni NULL

Let no man think lightly of good, saying in his heart, it will not benefit me. Even by the falling of water-drops a water-pot is filled; the wise man becomes full of good, even if he gather it little by little.

Character | Good | Heart | Little | Man | Will | Wise | Think |

Abel Bonnard

The moral life of any people rises or falls with the vitality or decay of its religious life.

Character | Life | Life | People |

Abel Bonnard

Emphasis on educational and vocational rehabilitation must not be allowed to overshadow the profound need that will exist for spiritual reorientation.

Character | Need | Will |

Paul Brunton, born Hermann Hirsch, wrote under various pseudonyms including Brunton Paul, Raphael Meriden and Raphael Delmonte

There is only one Duty. It is to realize the divinity within... our most sacred life purpose, the most honored ground of existence, and everything else must be made to subserve it.

Character | Divinity | Duty | Existence | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Sacred |

Jean de La Bruyère

Profound ignorance makes a man dogmatic. The man who knows nothing thinks he is teaching others what he has just learned himself; the man who knows a great deal can't imagine that what he is saying is not common knowledge, and speaks indifferently.

Character | Ignorance | Knowledge | Man | Nothing |

Buddha, Gautama Buddha, or The Buddha, also Gotama Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha and Buddha Śākyamuni NULL

Through zeal knowledge is gotten, through lack of zeal knowledge is lost; let a man who knows this double path of gain and loss thus place himself that knowledge may grow.

Character | Knowledge | Man | Zeal | Loss |

Margaret Bourke-White

Only by his action can a man make (himself/his life) whole... You are responsible for what you have done and the people whom you have influenced. In the end it is only the work that counts.

Action | Character | Life | Life | Man | People | Work |

Christian Nestell Bovee

Earnestness is the devotion of all the faculties. It is the cause of patience; gives endurance; overcomes pain; strengthens weakness; braves dangers; sustains hope; makes light of difficulties, and lessens the sense of weariness in overcoming them.

Cause | Character | Devotion | Earnestness | Endurance | Hope | Light | Pain | Patience | Sense | Weakness |